Current Affairs
Another one of the fun things about being back in SA is the fact I can be bought up to date with current affairs.
I am faced with a plethora of information. 702 in the morning and evening. Choice of 3 newspapers with National and International News. Access to all kinds of people who discuss current affairs as a matter of course.
The following have perked my interest:
SA Decides to have a National Provident Fund.
Interesting way of removing money from the economy and making the rich poor. I have flitted around Africa for the last 15 odd years. Each of the country’s I stopped in had a National Provident Fund. In each of the country’s the National Provident fund did not even come close to providing for retirement of whom it was targeted at.
What they did have was huge buildings, bloated administration, Jobs for Pals and rather interesting investment policies. A lot of the funds were used to develop parts of the country with no recognition as to returns on those investments.
The net effect? Cost of employment goes up. Old age Pensioners still starve. Government Fat Cats get fatter.
Unfortunately I will not be proven correct until I retire.
Crime in SA
There is an amazing campaign by the media to bring crime to the forefront. Crime in SA is unacceptable – we all concur. Government does not have the wherewithal to resolve crime effectively. The standard of our police force is abysmal in general and complaints abound.
Government ministers get robbed. Good old front page news to show how bad our crime is.
President authorizes R90 million for a security wall around government houses in PTA (Tswane). Front page news. The fact they are importing the wall from China makes it that much more interesting. Good god people. With our crime the way it is, security walls are our specialty. The only issue I am sure, is the Chinese are doing a great counter trade deal instead of demanding cash.
Kiddie gets kidnapped in Tswane. Big investigation reveals some guy has been molesting other kids in the area. Guy is arrested. Original case still needs to be solved.
And so it goes on.
On a personal note:
I continue to revel in the fact that I am now in JHB. The one thing which is interesting is my cooking skills have taken a dive. Having food cooked for me for such a long time means last nights meal – a beef stew – was quite sad. I did not take the meat out that morning to defrost, and I was late in starting and cooked it too fast. Net effect – tough meat with a marginal amount of flavour. I really do need to plan meals better.
I took my car in for wheel balancing yesterday and it transpired that the reason for the vibration was due to my tires not quite been round. R1800 later, the vibration is gone. *sigh*
My swimming pool continues to make my life a misery and while relooking at it this morning in an attempt to make the green go away, I made the monumentous decision to get some professional help in. It is sad having a nice pool that has algae floating on the top. May I should introduce some fish to eat the algae.
Traffic continues to be the bain of my life and I had thought I had resolved my route to work. This morning however – for no apparent reason – it too 50% longer to get to work. I am thus back to working out what route is the best on a regular basis. Traffic reports do help, but for some reason they never seem to mention the backups that I pass. Maybe I need to do traffic reporting.
Oh yes - Internet from the Office is slower than from Ghana. Go figure!
Hope you all having loads of fun!!
I am faced with a plethora of information. 702 in the morning and evening. Choice of 3 newspapers with National and International News. Access to all kinds of people who discuss current affairs as a matter of course.
The following have perked my interest:
SA Decides to have a National Provident Fund.
Interesting way of removing money from the economy and making the rich poor. I have flitted around Africa for the last 15 odd years. Each of the country’s I stopped in had a National Provident Fund. In each of the country’s the National Provident fund did not even come close to providing for retirement of whom it was targeted at.
What they did have was huge buildings, bloated administration, Jobs for Pals and rather interesting investment policies. A lot of the funds were used to develop parts of the country with no recognition as to returns on those investments.
The net effect? Cost of employment goes up. Old age Pensioners still starve. Government Fat Cats get fatter.
Unfortunately I will not be proven correct until I retire.
Crime in SA
There is an amazing campaign by the media to bring crime to the forefront. Crime in SA is unacceptable – we all concur. Government does not have the wherewithal to resolve crime effectively. The standard of our police force is abysmal in general and complaints abound.
Government ministers get robbed. Good old front page news to show how bad our crime is.
President authorizes R90 million for a security wall around government houses in PTA (Tswane). Front page news. The fact they are importing the wall from China makes it that much more interesting. Good god people. With our crime the way it is, security walls are our specialty. The only issue I am sure, is the Chinese are doing a great counter trade deal instead of demanding cash.
Kiddie gets kidnapped in Tswane. Big investigation reveals some guy has been molesting other kids in the area. Guy is arrested. Original case still needs to be solved.
And so it goes on.
On a personal note:
I continue to revel in the fact that I am now in JHB. The one thing which is interesting is my cooking skills have taken a dive. Having food cooked for me for such a long time means last nights meal – a beef stew – was quite sad. I did not take the meat out that morning to defrost, and I was late in starting and cooked it too fast. Net effect – tough meat with a marginal amount of flavour. I really do need to plan meals better.
I took my car in for wheel balancing yesterday and it transpired that the reason for the vibration was due to my tires not quite been round. R1800 later, the vibration is gone. *sigh*
My swimming pool continues to make my life a misery and while relooking at it this morning in an attempt to make the green go away, I made the monumentous decision to get some professional help in. It is sad having a nice pool that has algae floating on the top. May I should introduce some fish to eat the algae.
Traffic continues to be the bain of my life and I had thought I had resolved my route to work. This morning however – for no apparent reason – it too 50% longer to get to work. I am thus back to working out what route is the best on a regular basis. Traffic reports do help, but for some reason they never seem to mention the backups that I pass. Maybe I need to do traffic reporting.
Oh yes - Internet from the Office is slower than from Ghana. Go figure!
Hope you all having loads of fun!!
1 Comments:
The article on IOL regarding the provident fund just made me shake my head "http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20070224084319653C516152",
especially the bit about preventing the rich-get-richer structure.
Ah, and our dear president. This is the same man that says we're overreacting about the crime and that it has actually gone down over the last few years.
The car wheels aren't quite round? How does that happen? Someone has been testing the ABS brakes on the car?
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